The presently disclosed embodiment relates to a door checker device for use in vehicles, and more particularly, to a door checker device for use in vehicles, which is capable of restraining opening and closing of a door to meet a demand of a passenger and has high durability.
In vehicles, when a door maintains its opening state stably, passengers or drivers may easily get on or off the vehicle through the door or goods may be easily loaded on or unloaded from the vehicle through the door, but a door hinge merely maintains a mounted state of the door and simply allows pivotable opening and closing of the door, failing to allow the door to maintain an open state at a predetermined angle in an opening and closing trajectory of the door.
Thus, in a vehicle, a door checker device is installed in a center portion of a front side of an inner panel of the door, such that the door may maintain a stationary state at two or three points in an opening and closing trajectory of the door.
Such a checker device for a vehicle generally include a fixing member attached to a vehicle body side of the vehicle, a checker arm having an end hinge-coupled to the fixing member to rotate and positioned between the door and a vehicle body, and a door checker that is attached to a door side and receives the checker arm therein to allow the door to maintain a stationary state at a predetermined position in a moving trajectory of the door while sliding along a longitudinal direction of the checker arm.
The checker device includes a base bracket having a predetermined-size space formed therein, a slider received inside the base bracket, a spring positioned in a side of the slider, and a base cover coupled to a side surface of the base bracket.
A conventional door checker device for a vehicle structured as described above operates as described below.
Once the door is opened, the position of the door is changed, such that along with an opened state of the door, the door checker operates on the checker arm together with movement of the door. For example, the door at the topmost position is completely opened, and in this case, the door checker is pushed to the rearmost end portion of the checker arm, together with the door.
In this process, the checker arm moves along the inner space formed in the door checker, such that when the checker arm passes through the inner space, the slider received inside the door checker and a concave groove of the checker arm contact to perform a door checker function of providing a buffering force to an opening force of the door.
Such a conventional checker device has a restricted checker operation range of 2 stages or 3 stages. For example, assuming that when the door is opened at 35°, the door is restricted to one stage, and when the door is opened at 70°, the door is restricted to two stages, then the door may not be opened at 35° or more because another vehicle is parked very closely to a side of the vehicle, and if the door needs to be maintained opened in that case, it becomes difficult to fix the door by using the door checker.
Moreover, if the concave groove is worn out due to long-term use, the door checker may not operate properly, such that the door may be closed even when needing to maintain the opened state, resulting in an accident.
Recently, a technique has been developed which senses an object around the door to prevent the door from being opened by a predetermined amount or more, but a conventional machine-based checker may not be able to derive stop of rotation of the door adaptively for such emergency.